Testing and Certification

Once you have completed development, use this guide independently as a testing checklist and a self-certification tool to help you verify that all required capabilities for integration have been thoroughly tested.

Once ready, the Partner Integrations team will review your readiness. Upon approval, we will prepare your account and confirm when you can proceed with the formal certification process.

Instructions

To use this guide, ensure that you have access to our test Platform and that it's configured and mapped to your PMS. Additionally, you must have access to our test endpoint to send requests.

This guide provides a series of scenarios to test all available pmsXchange API capabilities. Regarding inventory, only Availability is mandatory, but the Rooms and Rates, Reservations Upload, Reservations Import, Payment Transaction Record, as well as Reservation (Initial Delivery) are also mandatory; the other capabilities are strongly recommended. If you do not support any of these optional capabilities, skip them and proceed to the next test scenario.

Once you have completed all test scenarios, you will be asked to fill out a form providing all the necessary information to finalise the certification.

Test Scenarios

To assist with automating your testing please fork SiteMinder's PMS Postman Collection, where you will see various request scenarios, as well as the detailed breakdown of the Reservation Certification Scenarios.

Step 1 - Fork SiteMinder's PMS Postman Collection and pmsx-api environment.

Step 2 - Update the PMS environment with your specific details.

Step 3 - Select Run Collections.

Step 4 - After running the collection, a summary will display showing which scenarios passed or failed.

Step 5 - Click View Results to see more details on each test, including the Request sent and the Response received.

Note: For the Reservation Certification scenarios, the delay between scenarios is controlled by the delayRun variable in the pmsx-api environment.

For more details on using Postman, see the article Test your API using the Collection Runner.

1. Rooms and Rates

To assist with testing, use the Rooms and Rates postman collection (linked in the Getting Started guide).

Use the test PMS code PMSXTEST and test PMS hotel codes PMSXTEST1, PMSXTEST2, and PMSXTEST3.

When you successfully queried for all 3 hotel codes, you should have 3 independent files returned. Please save each file and provide these to the Partner Integrations team as proof of completion.

2. Small Flush Update

From the PMS, send a small full flush of all mapped room types' availability, rates and restrictions. You can do a flush of 30, 60 or 90 days.

This test is to ensure your PMS is bundling dates and optimising messages as per our Message Structure requirements.

• Check that you received a Success response from SiteMinder

• Check SiteMinder Platform -> Distribution -> Inventory Grid if the updates have been applied.

SiteMinder Platform Inventory

3. Targeted Data Update (Delta)

This scenario tests updates where only specific data points, like a single rate change or availability adjustment made in the PMS, are sent for a short period, verifying the PMS ability to push delta data updates efficiently and accurately.

To complete this scenario, first select any future month within the next year. Then, for each specified day in the table (e.g., Day 1, Day 2, Day 5), apply the changes using the corresponding dates within that chosen month. For example, if you select March, use March 1 for Day 1, March 2 for Day 2, and March 5 for Day 5.

- Availability

Set availability for the following room type and date.

Room Type	Date	Availability
Room A	Day 1	6
Room B	Day 5 to Day 10	10

- Restrictions

Set restrictions for the following room rates and dates.

Room Type	Rate Plan	Date	Restriction
Room A	Rate 2	Day 3 to Day 7	Enable Stop Sell
Room A	Rate 2	Day 5	Disable Stop Sell
Room A	Rate 2	Day 4	Enable CTA
Room A	Rate 2	Day 7	Enable CTD
Room A	Rate 2	Day 1 to Day 28	Min. Stay to 2
Room A	Rate 2	Day 1 to Day 28	Max. Stay to 7

- Rates

Set rates for the following room rates and dates.

PDP

Room Type	Rate Plan	Date	Value
Room A	Rate 2	Day 15 to Day 17	200
Room A	Rate 2	Day 18	300
Room A	Rate 2	Day 20 to Day 21	350

OBP

Room Type	Rate Plan	Date	Value
Room A	Guest 1	Day 1 to Day 15	150
	Guest 2		200
	Guest 3		250
	Guest 4		300
	Guest 5		350

4. Reservations

You can use our PMS Toolkit and Direct Booking engine URL to create test reservations, modifications and cancellations and check that the Reservations API flow is working.

Refer to the Reservations section for further details. The following are common reservation types and modifications that you will receive from various booking sources (OTAs).

Access the PMS Toolkit here: https://tpi-pms-toolkit-toolkit.preprod.siteminderlabs.com/

For security reasons, always use test credit card details and never real ones when testing reservations. Refer to Test Credit Cards.

- Multi Room

This scenario tests your system’s ability to accept Multi RoomStay reservations with two or more rooms booked for the same date range and/or consecutive days within the RoomStays element. From the PMS Toolkit:

Two Different RoomTypes

1. Go to the Basic tab and click Generate under the Two Different RoomType - Rateplan, 1 night section.

   1. Verify that the 2 room types are different.

   2. Date Range: Select any 1 night. Ex: 07/04/2023 - 07/04/2023 is the 1 stay night. This is not the check-in and check-out dates. Keep the same dates for both.

2. Click Send

Two Same RoomTypes

1. Go to the Basic tab and click Generate under the Two Same RoomType - Rateplan, 1 night section.

   1. Verify that the 2 room types are the same.

   2. Date Range: Select any 1 night. Ex: 07/04/2023 - 07/04/2023 is the 1 stay night. This is not the check-in and check-out dates. Keep the same dates for both.

2. Click Send

- Modifications

For modifications, you can create any reservation from PMS Toolkit, go back to Sent scenarios and Modify the test reservations. You can change the stay dates or the room type booked. Using the OTA_HotelAvailNotifRQ, the PMS sends back the affected 'Availability' change (increase or decrease) based on the modification type.

1. Go to Sent Scenarios on the left nav bar.

2. Find the reservationID and click Modify

3. Delete one of the room types, or Change stay dates.

4. Click Send

- Cancellations

Same as modifications, go back to the Sent scenarios and Cancel the test reservations. Using the OTA_HotelAvailNotifRQ, the PMS sends back the affected 'Availability' change/increase.

1. Go to Sent Scenarios on the left nav bar.

2. Find the reservationID and click Modify

3. Click Cancel Reservation

4. Click Send

- Reservation Upload

1. Reservation Creation and Testing:

   • Generate a set of test reservations, including scenarios where reservations are:

     • @ResStatus is Reserved , Waitlisted , Cancelled , No-show , In-house or Checked-Out

     • Walk-in Reservation

     • Reservations from a Direct Booking Channel

     • Reservations from a CRS, GDS or Wholesaler

     • Modification or Cancellation of a Reservation originally delivered via SiteMinder

2. Content Validation:

   • The system should be tested with both Minimum and Maximum Content XML Samples to ensure compatibility with varying data sizes.

3. Response Validation:

   • SiteMinder will respond with a success (OTA_HotelResNotifRS) or an eloquent error message for each reservation.

   • Errors will clearly describe the issue (e.g., missing data) but will not affect the HTTP status code, which will remain 200.

   • Standard HTTP error codes will be used (e.g., 500, 503) only for server-level issues.

4. Issue Reporting and Fixes:

   • If an issue is identified (e.g., reservations not delivered, unclear responses), please notify the SiteMinder Partner Integrations team to investigate for you.

   • Once the issue is resolved, testing can resume.

   • You can "fail" certification multiple times; the process aims to address all issues before final approval.

Final Steps

If you are using this guide as a testing checklist and are now ready to begin certification, please contact the Partner Integrations team to confirm your readiness. If you are already in the certification process, complete the form provided via email, ensuring that all required information is accurately included for final review.